The Center for Craniofacial Anomalies is a unit of the College of Medicine of the University of Illinois at the Medial Center in Chicago. It is first such interdisciplinary Center to be established and it is the equivalent of a clinical department. The Center provides comprehensive tertiary care for patients with congenital, developmental and acquired craniofacial anomalies derived from a wide catch-basin of referrals. Special training programs, laboratory and clinical research are an integral part of the Center's missions. Its resources are augmented through a collaborating consortium of regional institutions with the objective of providing optimal care for the special patient at the lowest possible cost by sharing of resources. The major research thrust is a continuing longitudinal growth study initiated in 1949 to record the natural history of various malformations beginning with the infant. The data base includes patient and family histories, comprehensive systems review, photographs, radiographs, and other documentation formatted for storage, retrieval and analysis by electronic data processing technics. More than 6500 subjects are now included in the study. Current projects focus on quantitative dysmorphology, growth patterns, epidemiology, genetics and evaluation of treatment. Through its data bank and central facilities section that provides photographic, medical art and statistical services it interacts with other ongoing projects involving auditory and speech research and with various departments including ophthalmology, otolaryngology, pediatrics, radiology, pathology, and dermatology. The Center includes a genetics unit that offers counseling and conducts research. The specific aims of the Center are to focus on problems of clinical management and research targets that are refractory to solution by a unidisciplinary approach. Within the university setting the Center seeks to recruit the required conceptual and methdological resources essential for an educational forum that fosters communication and collaboration between diverse disciplines. The Center's ultimate objective is prevention both in the occurrence of birth defects and in the minimization of the derived complications for the patient, family and society.